Know Your Customer, a leading RegTech provider specialised in Business KYC verification, is delighted to announce the addition of its solution to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority's (HKMA) Commercial Data Interchange (CDI). This collaboration is the latest milestone in the HKMA’s strategy to foster more efficient financial intermediation in the banking system and promote financial inclusion in the region.

The CDI represents a cutting-edge financial data infrastructure that eliminates the need for multiple one-to-one connections between banks and data providers. Through CDI, each bank and data provider establishes a single connection, streamlining data sharing at unprecedented levels.

Know Your Customer's pivotal role within CDI is to provide seamless and automated access to the Hong Kong Companies Registry (HKCR) and Inland Revenue Department (IRD), as well as to a global network of official registries across 130+ countries worldwide. Know Your Customer’s proprietary technology empowers compliance teams at banks and regulated institutions with real-time access to official company documents, including certificates of incorporation and annual returns. Furthermore, the solution intelligently reads and extracts all shareholder and company details from company documents as structured data, thereby accelerating entity structure mapping and ultimate beneficial owner (UBO) identification for anti-money laundering purposes.

By adopting Know Your Customer through CDI, financial institutions in Hong Kong can significantly enhance the efficiency and accuracy of their Know Your Business (KYB) and UBO checks. This transformative integration paves the way for digital transformation, facilitating a superior customer experience for both local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large multinational corporations (MNCs). 

Claus Christensen, CEO & Co-Founder of Know Your Customer, expressed his enthusiasm for the strategic potential of RegTech adoption in the financial services sector, particularly within HKMA's forward-thinking approach. He stated:

"The CDI is just one of the many tangible and proactive initiatives taken by the regulator to drive RegTech adoption across the industry. I and the entire team at Know Your Customer are eager to contribute to helping banks strengthen their internal compliance processes and embrace digital transformation in the critical areas of business verification and onboarding."

The integration of Know Your Customer with HKMA's Commercial Data Interchange signals the importance of real-time registry access and primary source data to ensure ongoing compliance in the eyes of the regulator. As Know Your Customer continues to lead the way in high-quality compliance solutions, this partnership stands as a testament to the banking sector’s commitment to concrete innovation and measurable progress.

Robocash platform specialists analyzed 49 European P2P platforms of Consumer, Business and Real Estate segments from 18 countries with available statistics.

In terms of market volume, the first place is occupied by the Baltic states, which own 43% of the surveyed P2P platforms. "The region took interest in the market in 2016. With the growing imbalance between the available funds of Western European investors and the presence of a large number of "Eastern" projects that need money, here began the active development of the P2P sector." - Robocash platform analysts comment on the statistics.

The Netherlands, Ireland and the UK also stand out among the analyzed platforms with a share of 8.2% each. "The UK was the "pioneer" of the European P2P market, which explains its high share. But the Baltic platforms with their liberal regulation have gradually displaced the UK from the leadership pedestal," - the analysts add - "Platforms in the Netherlands also faced regulatory hurdles in the early stages of development, but the market is gaining popularity among P2P investors”. 

In terms of stability and the development rate, Latvia and Estonia are also leaders. "On average, the platforms of these countries need 3.5 years to achieve key indicators and at the same time their monthly values are characterized by low fluctuations." - the experts explain the statistics. Following the top three is Bulgaria, which has recently demonstrated increased market growth rates in many directions.

It is worth noting that France performs best in terms of stable growth figures, although P2P platforms here need more time to reach key milestones. According to last year's research, Croatian companies are showing steady development, most likely due to the loyal national legislation. But in terms of volume, they still have a small share of the market.

Temenos today announced that Temenos Payments Hub has become the first dedicated payments solution to deliver innovative payments capabilities on the IBM Cloud for Financial Services®, an industry-specific platform designed to accelerate financial institutions' digital transformations with security at the forefront. Now, with the Temenos Payments Hub on IBM Cloud for Financial Services, the solution is available across IBM’s hybrid cloud infrastructure, running on Red Hat OpenShift with IBM Power as well as LinuxONE.

Temenos payments experts will be available to meet at Sibos in Toronto (stand D30) from September 18^th to 21^st.

Temenos Payments Hub is designed to offer the first step for banks to take advantage of the new payments initiatives such as the FedNow Instant Payments Service in the US and SEPA Instant in Europe and offer secured, digital banking services to customers. With Temenos Payments Hub, banks can progressively modernize their payments capabilities and their integration with new payments schemes and rails.

This collaboration with IBM cements Temenos’ long history of helping clients to transform with cloud, enabling the availability of Temenos’ payments solution on the public cloud and offering clients the confidence that the Temenos platform can help them address their stringent regulatory requirements. With Temenos Payments Hub on IBM Cloud for Financial Services, banks can combine IBM’s expertise in providing secured, cloud infrastructure with Temenos’ innovative payments solutions.

IBM Cloud for Financial Services aims to help reduce risk throughout the supply chain by addressing resiliency, performance, security and regulatory compliance obligations for financial institutions. The IBM Cloud® Framework for Financial Services has an industry-defined security and a streamlined compliance controls framework, built in collaboration with the IBM Financial Services Cloud Council, a 140-plus member group bringing together CIOs, CTOs, CISOs and risk experts from over 80 financial institutions to help mitigate systemic risk across the financial services industry. Only ISVs and SaaS providers that are validated to be in alignment with the Framework are eligible to deliver offerings on the IBM Cloud for Financial Services.

Temenos Payments Hub has been validated to be in alignment with IBM’s Framework and by running Temenos Payments Hub on IBM Cloud for Financial Services, the solution aims to enable clients to stay agile and at the forefront of innovation. This can help them deliver fast, reliable, and transparent payment services to their customers, without the need to build and maintain custom security and compliance controls themselves. This can also help banks to quickly take advantage of new innovations such as instant payments, while also providing a secured platform to progressively modernize their payments capabilities on a single code base across Temenos’ composable banking platform.

Ross Mallace, EVP Global Head of SaaS & Partner Ecosystem, Temenos, said: “Following on from a number of recent wins for SEPA Instant processing in Europe and our certification for the FedNow program in the US as well as a win with a global payments leader, Temenos sees tremendous growth opportunities in the payments space. With Temenos Payments Hub, banks can quickly implement instant payments services like FedNow and can then proceed to progressively modernize their payments capabilities. We continue to invest in our single code base across payments and core banking, which is helping banks accelerate time to value.”

By meeting the requirements of the IBM Cloud Framework for Financial Services, Temenos is the first payments solution on IBM Cloud for Financial Services, further reinforcing Temenos’ commitment to helping clients with their payments transformation, while also making it more accessible to the large number of financial institutions already working with IBM.

Prakash Pattni, MD, Financial Services Digital Transformation, IBM Cloud, commented: “With Temenos Payments Hub now available on IBM Cloud for Financial Services, we are continuing our longstanding collaboration with Temenos to help financial institutions around the world deploy next-generation banking technology, improve customer experience and reduce costs. The payments ecosystem is at an inflection point for transformation and we believe this collaboration can be a catalyst for change – helping organizations on their payments modernization journey. With our work together, IBM and Temenos are committed to empowering banks to embrace instant payments in a hybrid cloud environment while helping the banks address challenges in security, governance and compliance.”

In addition to the Temenos Payments Hub, Temenos open platform, running on Red Hat OpenShift, is available on IBM Power, LinuxONE and IBM Cloud for Financial Services to enable banks to realize the benefits of hybrid cloud. Temenos is actively working with IBM Infrastructure and IBM Consulting to support core banking modernization in a managed hybrid cloud. The combination of Temenos open platform and IBM’s hybrid cloud infrastructure aims to help accelerate banks’ digital transformation by providing enhanced security, operational efficiency and innovation. It is also designed to enable modernization of technology stacks and coexistence with hybrid cloud platforms.

Temenos Payments covers the complete payments lifecycle from order intake to clearing and settlement. It combines deep end-to-end functionality with the most advanced cloud-native, cloud-agnostic, Explainable AI, and API-first enabled payments technology. Temenos Payments can scale massively handling all payment types and schemes, helping banks to gain greater efficiency and lower costs. Temenos was recently ranked the #1 best-selling payments system in the global IBS Sales League Table for the fifth year in a row.

Chipper Cash, a financial services company serving over five million customers, has launched Chipper ID, an AI-powered suite of verification services, tailored to solving industry-wide customer onboarding and compliance issues in the African market. 

Chipper ID has been designed to tackle Know Your Customer (KYC) issues across the African continent including ID verification, often impacted by mobile issues,

and sub-par KYC solutions in order to protect against pipeline losses and

inauthentic users.

The suite consists of five core product areas: 

• Liveness, an on-device machine learning system that detects authentic users by identifying that a human is completing the process rather than a video or AI deepfake.
• Facial Verification, a one-to-many verification supported by deep learning to identify fake or duplicated image submissions.
• Document Verification, a multi-tiered deep learning system that processes a vast series of document types.
• Sanctions and Watchlist Screening, Screen Sentinel, a dynamic screening system, and ScreenGPT, a screening bot for comprehensive compliance.
• Back Office Portal Hub, for centralised and streamlined compliance management.

Ham Serunjogi, CEO and Co-Founder of Chipper Cash, said: “Chipper ID is here to revolutionise online identity and verification through innovative AI technology for businesses serving the African market. Chipper ID has been designed specifically to address the unique challenges faced in Africa, providing a secure and trusted solution that is tailor made for businesses operating across the continent.”

“Over the years, we’ve experienced lacklustre solutions on the African continent for verification due to many tools being built for the Western world. Faced with these challenges, we began to put in place the foundation blocks for Chipper ID – a product we now use ourselves within our own business and one that has saved us millions of dollars, reduced fraud, and yielded better results across onboarding and verification.”

“KYC checks play a vital role in the onboarding process for new customers and represents one of the biggest challenges that financially regulated companies face. This is why our team of in-house experts has taken a stringent verification focus with Chipper ID to deliver a trusted tool purpose-built for the continent.”

Chipper ID sets out to address common compliance issues including expensive vendor solutions not tailored for the African market, siloed screening data, evolving global regulations, and false positives, utilising AI to enhance the accuracy and

efficiency of data collection and analysis.

Samee Zahid, Director of Engineering at Chipper Cash, said: “Artificial Intelligence is a central pillar for Chipper. We are constantly innovating and putting AI at the heart of our solutions from building an in-house analyst bot to mapping transactional risk patterns. There is a huge opportunity for AI in the financial services space, and it forms an integral part of Chipper ID’s verification processes.”

“Chipper ID leverages state-of-the-art AI technology to verify users and supercharge the onboarding of new customers, faster than ever and with greater accuracy.”

Finastra today announced a multi-year global agreement with Microsoft focused on trade platform modernization, building on the existing availability of Finastra Trade Innovation in the cloud. Delivering the full functionality of Trade Innovation via a full microservices architecture using Microsoft Azure, will give banks increased agility, flexibility and scalability, enabling them to continue to provide service excellence to customers throughout their modernization journey.

As the expectations of corporate customers evolve, financial institutions need to deliver a seamless and engaging transactional experience across their trade finance and supply chain finance operations in support of open finance. Further extending the open APIs available through Trade Innovation and Finastra’s open innovation platform, FusionFabric.cloud, will allow customers to leverage a vibrant digital trade ecosystem, supporting the digitalization of the full transaction lifecycle.

“Partnering with Microsoft builds on our joint strategic vision to help accelerate the digital transformation of financial services, and support customers on their journeys to be open,” said Isabel Fernandez, Executive Vice President for Lending at Finastra. “Customers are eager to transform their trade finance and supply chain offerings, and to access the latest innovations, working with partners across the ecosystem. Via this agreement, existing and new customers will benefit from increased flexibility to connect, collaborate and adapt to evolving customer needs and new regulations.”

Bill Borden, Corporate Vice President, Worldwide Financial Services, Microsoft added: “We’re excited to deepen our relationship with Finastra to support banks on their trade modernization journey. Using the rich functionality of Finastra’s Trade Innovation platform and FusionFabric.cloud, combined with the power of Microsoft Azure and data and AI advancements, we look forward to helping financial institutions further accelerate innovation, increase efficiencies, enhance customer engagement and transform their operations at scale.”

Finastra Trade Innovation was recognized once again as “Best in Class” in the Aite Matrix of Trade Finance Software (Feb 2023) from Datos Insights (formerly Aite-Novarica Group). Enrico Camerinelli, Strategic Advisor at Datos Insights said: “The decline of manually intensive and paper trade finance operations, the continued growth of supply chain finance, and the rise of fintech players are encouraging banks to transform the status quo with API-based open banking, artificial intelligence, and data analytics. To achieve this, banks need modern, open systems and the support of industry leaders in this space, supporting them on their transformation journeys.”

The Blockchain Economy Dubai Summit is generating palpable excitement within the blockchain and crypto communities, with only two weeks remaining until the event. Scheduled for October 4-5, 2023, at the Le Meridien Dubai Hotel & Conference Center, this prestigious event gathers over 3,000 blockchain entrepreneurs, crypto enthusiasts, and industry leaders from 85 countries.

The Summit is bolstered by its high-profile sponsors, including OKX as the Title Sponsor and other significant partners like Uniqan Capital, Foxify, Saitama, B2rbroker, B2BinPay, UZX, Bitunix, Tencent Cloud, Expand My Business, Avrora Metaverse, P2Pbet, Areon Network and many others who are building the future of web3 solidifying their positions in the industry.

Attendees can anticipate insightful dialogues from an illustrious panel of experts, including:

• Lennix Lai, Global Chief Commercial Officer at OKX

• Dr. Ebrahim Al Alkeem, Director at the Government of Abu Dhabi and an authority on Digital Transformation, Cyber Security, and Artificial Intelligence

• Martin Hanzl, Head of New Technologies at EY Law

• Michaël van de Poppe, CEO & Founder of MN Trading

• Akshay Chopra, VP, Head of Innovation & Design at Visa CEMEA

• Vladimir Nikolenko, CBDC & Digital Assets Associate Director at Accenture

• Amnah Ajmal, Executive Vice President, Market Development, EEMEA, Mastercard

• Sam Blatteis, CEO of The MENA Catalysts

• Phillip Liu, General Manager of Tencent Cloud International in the MENA Region

• Dr. Salim Al-Shuaili, Senior Executive at the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology of Oman

• Adrian Zduńczyk, Founder of The Birb Nest

• George Gvazava, Chief Crypto Officer at Bank of Georgia

A distinguished Forbes personality, Senior Producer, and Presenter, Ramia Farrage, will serve as the Master of Ceremony for the two-day duration of this anticipated Summit. 

The Summit promises engaging and comprehensive discussions on groundbreaking topics, framed in their most sophisticated formats: Investment and Trading Strategies: The Future Landscape; Decentralized Finance (DeFi): New Frontiers; Transitioning from Web2 to Web3: A Roadmap; Regulatory Frameworks for Cryptocurrency Usage; Seamless Payment Applications in Blockchain; The Intersection of AI and Web3: A Harmonious Convergence, among many others.

The event is uniquely positioned to attract a diverse cross-section of stakeholders, including C-level decision-makers, venture capitalists, blockchain entrepreneurs more than 100 global media organizations, institutional and private investors, influencers, and many others. The Happy Bird tickets for the Blockchain Economy Dubai Summit 2023 are nearing a sold-out status, and soon only Lazy Bird tickets will be available. For individuals aiming to dive deep into groundbreaking innovations, eager to network with global decision-makers from all around the world, or interested in exploring the Dubai’s web3 market, the time to act is now.

Exceptional Perks for Attendees

Emirates Airlines, as the Official Airline partner, is offering exclusive travel discounts for global attendees of Blockchain Economy Dubai Summit. To further enhance attendee convenience, the organziers also provide specially discounted room rates at the Le Meridien Dubai Hotel & Conference Center.

Event Info

Event name: Blockchain Economy Dubai Summit

Dates: October 4-5, 2023

Event website: https://beconomydubai.com 

Last Happy - Bird tickets: https://beconomydubai.com/tickets 

Event hashtag: #BESUMMIT Dubai 2023

Consumer fintech Salmon today announces the launch of Salmon  Credit – its first credit line product with built-in QR Ph payment options, providing a simple and familiar  way for Filipinos to make payments at more than 600,000 QR Ph-enabled merchant locations across  the country.  

Salmon Credit grants customers easy and flexible access to credit, funding their daily spending needs  without requiring a separate loan application for each purchase. Customers will see their initially  awarded credit limit increase as they make more purchases and repayments with Salmon Credit,  subject to certain conditions being met. This new product will initially be available exclusively to  existing Salmon customers and will later become open to the general public as well.  

Salmon Credit customers will be able to either instruct Salmon to disburse their available limit to any  Instapay-enabled bank account or e-wallet, or make payments at locations accepting QR Ph,  including those of GCash, PayMaya and many others, which are widely used by millions of Filipinos.  

Salmon Co-founder Raffy Montemayor commented: “The launch of Salmon Credit marks a significant  milestone for Salmon. The Salmon App now offers many interactive features to make it simpler for  existing customers to get, use and repay credit. This engaging product, which will soon be rolled out  to the general public, has integrated QR Ph payment functionality and can be accessed via the  Salmon App. This product is particularly well suited for the Philippines, where merchants enabled to  process QR Ph purchases outnumber those with Visa/Mastercard terminals by a factor of 10:1. We  believe that this will become a popular product to enable credit access for millions of Filipinos. 

The great user experience is made possible by Salmon’s data-centric approach and AI, which helps  us to better understand our customers and set personalized credit limits for them that evolve with  customer needs. We believe this product will be well received by our valued customers and will help  us to continue building long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with them.’’ 

Key Features of Salmon Credit include:

Convenience: With all account information and payment features available in the mobile app, Salmon's credit line represents our ongoing commitment to delivering and expanding advanced digital  solutions that ensure a simple and transparent customer experience.  

Improved User Interface: The Salmon App guides applicants through the credit application process  via helpful in-app hints and prompts, ensuring a seamless user experience. 

QR Ph Code Integration: Through a partnership with QR Ph, our mobile app's QR code functionality  simplifies payments, streamlining the financial transaction process for our users. QR Ph is the  Philippines’ QR code standard, developed with security and convenience in mind to standardize the  use of QR codes, which are widely used in the Philippines. 

Personalized Limits: Salmon's AI/ML-powered credit engine assigns credit limits tailored to each  customer's financial situation, underscoring our commitment to sustainable lending. 

Flexible terms: Salmon provides customers with an interest-free grace period, allowing them to settle  debts before generating a monthly statement.

Zafin™, the leading provider of SaaS product and pricing platform solutions for banks, announces the launch of Zafin Studio a framework and methodology designed to inspire both commercial and retail banks to embrace a bolder, more innovative approach to delivering customer-centric product and pricing propositions and support business model transformation.

Built on the foundation of Zafin’s proven end-to-end product and pricing platform architecture, Zafin Studio is a consultative framework and methodology that integrates customer-centric design principles with actionable market and customer insights provided by Zafin’s Proposition Canvas, Product and Pricing Index (PPI), and Product Explorer. The powerful combination of the Zafin platform plus modeling techniques and tools enables the creation and delivery of tailored customer propositions that closely match customer preferences. This, in turn, extends customer lifetime value and allows banks to unlock valuable data and industry insights to leapfrog the competition when creating and delivering products and offers in market.

A recent 2023 JD Power study reveals that “as deposit balances and financial health levels sink, personalized advice and guidance become more important than ever”,^* reinforcing the need for banks to accelerate investments in technology in response to evolving customer demands and to meet overall customer satisfaction.

“In the ever-changing landscape of modern banking, banks must be agile, innovative, and able to unlock untapped capabilities from existing data to drive sustainable revenue growth, increase profitability and enhance customer experiences,” stated Charbel Safadi, President, Transformation and Modernization at Zafin. “Customer expectations are higher than ever. People want – and expect – their bank to know, understand and help them, and one of the most powerful way banks can do this is through personalization. As the leader in product and pricing lifecycle management, Zafin is committed to work alongside our customers to provide advanced solutions, leveraging generative AI so banks can accelerate time to market of products and services and craft dynamic product propositions that enhance and personalize customer banking experiences, today and in the future.”

Currently available for private preview, Zafin’s Product and Pricing Index (PPI) aggregates public data from top global banks leveraging Zafin Co-Pilot with advanced AI search capabilities to filter and segment data for precise analysis and gain insights into macro-economic trends and competitive banking offers.

Existing Zafin customers can also take advantage of Product Explorer which offers a smooth and secure connection to Zafin’s Product Catalog to provide a unified perspective of all configured products, their attributes, related analytics, and comparative insights using market data accessed via PPI.

Availability

Zafin Product and Pricing Index will be available in private preview in Q4 2023, Zafin Product Explorer will be available in private preview in Q1 2024, and Zafin Proposition Canvas will be in private preview in Q2 2024.

Request a consultation for Zafin Studio today or book a meeting with the Zafin team during the week of Sibos to learn more.

Continuing its impressive growth trajectory, Arteria AI, an award-winning global leader in enterprise digital documentation infrastructure, today announced Donna Mansfield will be joining the company as a new Strategic Account Director, further bolstering its team of industry-leading, experienced financial experts.

A respected, recognized and dynamic leader, Mansfield brings almost three decades of deep financial industry expertise to Arteria AI. During her previous work with Goldman Sachs, where she spent the vast majority of her distinguished career and was a Managing Director, she served in numerous key positions focused on transformative technologies and documentation, including as a Managing Director, Compliance Legal and Conflicts (CLC) Solutions and Digital Transformation, and as a Managing Director, Global Manager Derivative Documentation and Policy Group.

As a financial industry expert with a proven track record of managing business relationships and enterprise-scale projects, Manfield’s first-hand industry knowledge and insights allowed her to successfully build teams that deliver and implement the right innovative digital transformation strategies and core process solutions that solve for the needs of today’s financial institutions.

Manfield’s experience as a solutions buyer has given her exceptional insights into the needs and pressures of today’s financial institutions. In her new role at Arteria, she will continue to build and foster client relationships, sharing their vision and serving as a partner and champion to ensure seamless integrations that meet their needs, overcoming challenges and bottlenecks through the full transformative journey from the beginning to successful implementations.

“My experience as a direct buyer in the financial services industry has given me a deeper understanding and firsthand insights into what a client actually needs to ensure that their business needs are met,” said Mansfield. “As someone who has lived and breathed financial services, an end-user, and someone with a mandate to drive digital transformation, Arteria embodies what I looked for in a technology partner. They truly listen to their clients, and they have the commitment and flexibility to ensure that the unique requirements of those users are actually implemented. It’s what makes the company and its solution so extraordinary, and what led me to want to be part of this impressive team.”

“We are excited to have Donna officially join our team,” said Shelby Austin, Co-founder and CEO of Arteria AI. “Her in-depth knowledge of technology transformation and documentation-related initiatives and deep experience from the buyer's perspective will be extremely instrumental in ensuring we continue to deliver the best documentation experiences tailored to meet the needs of our clients even as they evolve.”

Arteria AI’s platform has been deployed at some of the world’s largest, top-ranked financial institutions, and was recently included in the CB Insights AI 100, listing the most promising private AI companies across the globe. The company remains committed to empowering its clients by providing them with fast, intelligent document processing capabilities that streamline their operations, reduce inefficiencies, provide valuable insights, enhance compliance and improve their overall documentation experience.